


Coloring Book

by aetataureate



Series: Spider-Man is Dead (Long Live Spider-Man) [4]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Miles Morales Will Always Have His Family, a very high-pressure situation for a middle schooler to be operating in, growing pains in all senses of the phrase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 10:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17578859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: Miles meets Spider-Man, who is super nice and really funny in person and is totally going to help him and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He takes pictures.Five minutes later a huge bald white dude in a suit murders Spider-Man right where Miles can see, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.





	Coloring Book

Miles meets Spider-Man, who is super nice and really funny in person and is totally going to help him and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He takes pictures.

Five minutes later a huge bald white dude in a suit murders Spider-Man right where Miles can see, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

Miles has never seen anyone die before, and it’s— it’s really, really scary. Like, Miles is tough, okay, his parents don’t let him watch most of the R-rated horror movies but sometimes Carmen’s do when she had friends over, and Miles always sleeps _fine_ as long as his door is cracked and the bathroom light is on, but this is _really scary_ and it doesn’t _stop_ being scary, not even when he’s back in his room. Miles has never seen someone dead before, and Spider-Man was _so nice_ and he was going to _help him_ and _oh god_ —

Miles asks his dad whether he really hates Spider-Man. He doesn’t know what he expects. Maybe that his dad will say _oh, no, it’s a long-standing joke Spider-Man and I have, we laugh about it down at the station_. Or maybe _oh, no, I don’t mind about Spider-Man either way, the important thing is that someone’s always there to help people and get them home safe_. Or _it doesn’t matter what I think about Spider-Man, he helps people and it’s a bad thing if he’s dead_.

Miles’ dad says yes, he really hates Spider-Man. Miles doesn’t know what he expected.

Miles falls asleep that night feeling like a joint wrenched from its socket. He just can’t believe that anyone would actually want to kill Spider-Man.

***

When Miles was ten, Sandy Ramirez came to school saying she had seen Spider-Man save an old lady from a mugger, and then for weeks _everyone_ was seeing Spider-Man until DeAndre Travers said he was on the L train when Spider-Man stopped it from falling off the thing, and that actually turned out to be _true_ , and no one else had a better story than that. The point is, Miles is a kid from New York. He knows about Spider-Man. He played cops, robbers, and Spider-Man around the apartment they lived in when he was little, he read all the comic books until he got too old for them, and if a couple of the Christmas songs are in his Songify library, well, ‘tis the season. Maybe he didn’t actually _know_ Spider-Man, he hadn’t met him before or anything, even though his cousins in Arizona keep asking him about it and he’s had to explain to them like fifty times that not everyone in New York knows each other. Still, when Miles wakes up in the morning, it is obvious to him that the only thing left to do is be Spider-Man now. Nevermind that his dad made it a rule that he could only ever play as a cop so he wouldn’t get comfortable “glorifying crime.” He’s from _Brooklyn_. He got bit by a _weird spider_. Being Spider-Man is in his blood, in more ways than one. Besides, he promised Peter. He doesn’t know how he could not keep that promise.

Spider-Man’s name, by the way, was Peter. He was twenty-six, which is like, old. It’s two of Miles’ age, and Miles is feeling pretty old himself. This, Miles reflects as he gathers up the various accoutrements he assumes he needs to be Spider-Man, probably made Spider-Man-ing much easier. Peter Parker was a real adult, who had a credit card to buy things with and a room where he could keep his stuff without his mom finding it when she vacuumed and a wife who would tell him if he was being stupid or doing the wrong thing. Miles doesn’t have anyone to ask whether he’s doing the wrong thing, and he’s worried.

Miles is so worried, in fact, that he goes to the graveyard to see if dead Spider-Man can help somehow, even though his mom was quite clear on the circumstances under which he should mess with ghosts (no circumstances whatsoever). It turns out his mom was definitely right, like she always is, because at the graveyard is where things start to get really crazy.

***

The upshot of it all is that there are five Spider-People in Miles’ universe who are alive and one who is dead, and out of all of them Miles is the absolute worst Spider-Man. He only has two special things, a weird zap that might just be cold-weather static and an invisibility thing that would make Mrs. Simonson lose her mind about symbolism, and he can’t do either of them on command. Peter tries to make him feel better about it, but he’s got the attitude of a bridge troll who got hauled in under protest to serve as a camp counselor and it doesn’t help. Miles is thirteen, not seven. Gwen’s only fifteen months older than he is, even if it is two whole grades because of how their birthdays are, and she’s basically in charge. Plus she’s got a great suit, and her haircut is scary-cool even if Miles isn’t allowed to think that.

The point is, this is Miles’ universe. It’s his family’s neighborhood, and it’s his job to protect his family. But he doesn’t know how. He thinks about that while he writes a note for Uncle Aaron. Uncle Aaron is the only person he can tell this stuff to, because Uncle Aaron always listens to what he’s feeling and doesn’t make him feel like a little kid, or like he has to be this super-perfect person all the time who never does anything even a little bit wrong. Uncle Aaron treats him like a man, and he’s who Miles runs to when he’s trying to figure out how not to run from things.

Then the Prowler shows up, and Uncle Aaron is the Prowler, and everything falls out from under him.

***

Here’s a secret that Miles will never tell anyone, not even when he’s old and grey and his other secrets are all laid out like a buffet table for the general public: when Uncle Aaron pulled his mask back down over his face, Miles thought he was going to kill him.

He thought he just didn’t want to look.

That moment, and the moment that followed, are the new worst thing that has ever happened to Miles. Because he remembers, once, going out to the park by the East River, back when Uncle Aaron still came by the house sometimes.They had a picnic, and his mom traced the Manhattan skyline with him while his dad and Uncle Aaron fought over something in the background. It was summer. School was out. His dad was really mad, and he told him Uncle Aaron wouldn’t be coming for dinner anymore. Miles was upset, because he was afraid he would lose Uncle Aaron like Paula Mattia in his class had lost her grandmother, but his mom said you could never really lose your family and the next Tuesday Uncle Aaron took him out for ice cream like he did every week and they walked around the neighborhood.

Now he’s lost Uncle Aaron, and he’s ignored his parents’ phone calls and his dad hates Spider-Man even more than before and so Miles is lost, too.

Also, Peter ties him to his rolly chair when he when he runs off to save Miles’ neighborhood, which is really uncool of him.

Miles’ dad comes to see him, and Miles already knows the reason why, but in the space of a heartbeat it hits him how badly he wants his dad. He wants him to tell him he’s doing okay, and that he’s not mad and that they’re going to be fine and that he loves him. He wants, more than it should be possible to want anything in the world, for his dad to give him a hug.

Because his dad is the best and bravest man in the world, even when he’s sad, he does every one of those things that it’s possible to do through a locked door.

Miles finds that it wasn’t cold-weather static after all.

***

Miles gets a suit, and it’s his own, and it’s great. He turns invisible on command and punches Doc Ock with her own tentacle, which is objectively hilarious and he wishes he had a video. He and Gwen do awesome teamwork, and he even convinces Peter to go home instead of continuing his sad quest to martyr himself while dressed in shoes he found under a park bench and a onesie.

Miles is feeling pretty good until Kingpin knocks him down. And down. And down, until he hits him the way he hit Peter Parker, which is probably bad, actually. Then Kingpin tells Miles that he is going to take his family away from him, and Miles thinks _oh_.

_No_.

_You can’t do that_.

Because he can hear his parents’ voices like they’re right there, and suddenly, he understands: he is everything.

Miles is everything his parents gave up and everything Uncle Aaron never had. He’s the entire city, all of Brooklyn, and he’s cradled by it and clothed in it. He is the best of us and he believes it, he is the hope and the dream, joy and love, he is the future. Miles is a leap of faith walking and he’s as big as the sky. Kingpin cannot touch him.

“I’ll always have my family,” Miles says, and he lays one hand on Kingpin and blows him away.

Miles gives his dad the hug. He also gives him Kingpin, practically gift-wrapped, with a note and everything. He signs it “your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” because he’s got a legacy to carry on. But he’s not the only one.

***

The story begins with Peter Parker, and it ends with Miles Morales, but also: the story begins with Miles Morales.

**Author's Note:**

> And that’s a wrap! Thank you so so much to everyone who has read this series, in whole or in part—writing it has been one of my absolute favorite fandom experiences. Up-to-date contact info in my profile, if anyone wants to come yell about the Spider-Verse, or basically any other topic.
> 
> For Grace, for beta reading: darling, dearest, and [on AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso/works).
> 
> _Coloring Book_ is an album by Chance the Rapper.


End file.
